Douglas J. Halpert

Douglas Halpert has come to the office each day for over 28 years with the same objective: to help people with their immigration cases. His late grandfather arrived at Ellis Island in New York on a ship in the early 1900s, and was so traumatized by the experience that he would not speak about it despite his sunny disposition. This, coupled with Douglas’ wife’s immigration from Taiwan, and their adoption of their daughters from China, has fueled his passion for helping immigrants and the organizations and family members that sponsor them.

In 2014, Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley appointed Mr. Halpert as a Co-Chair of the Education & Talent Retention Committee of his Immigration Task Force. Mr. Halpert was also selected as Immigration Lawyer of the Year in Southwest Ohio by Best Lawyers in America in 2014. In 2015, the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber appointed Mr. Halpert to its working group to plan the establishment of a center for new Cincinnatians.

Mr. Halpert represents a diverse array of clients. He represents a number of large publicly-traded multinational companies and has helped them to formulate immigration sponsorship policies and programs. He and his team help organizations to advance the work visa and permanent residence cases necessary to attract and retained valued employees from countries throughout the world. Typical solutions include B-1 business visitor, F-1 student visa Optional Practical Training and STEM work authorization, J-1 exchange visitor, H-1B specialty occupation worker, L-1 intracompany transferee, E-1 treaty trader, E-2 treaty investor, E-3 Australian professionals TN Trade NAFTA, and O-1 extraordinary ability work visa cases. He also regularly helps those that he serves to prepare for visa applications at U.S. Consulates. He also handles a wide spectrum of permanent residence cases including PERM based and PERM exempt cases, including Extraordinary Ability, Outstanding Professor/Researcher, and National Interest Waiver.

Mr. Halpert’s clients also include non-profit organizations and a broad spectrum of professors, researchers, professionals and families. Foreign nationals with a pressing need for help through the immigration process, such as engineers of every specialty, master cheese makers, film directors, actors and crews, research scientists in virtually every field, lovelorn fiancées, professors, publishers, athletes and applied energy and agricultural experts, have found their counselor in Douglas.

Canadian companies often leverage his years of experience as a lawyer with a small firm at the Buffalo, New York / Fort Erie, Ontario border to help them with B-1 business visitor admissibility issues, TN Trade NAFTA and L-1 visa cases, as well as waivers of inadmissibility.

Organizations in the entertainment and arts field enlist Douglas’ help in securing work visas for actors, directors, producers and film crews often under “the show must go on” urgent timing circumstances. University professors and researchers often seek Douglas’ help in putting together Extraordinary Ability, National Interest Waiver, and Outstanding Researcher based permanent residence cases. Foreign students often seek Douglas’ advice on issues relative to their student status and transitioning to the U.S. work force.

Douglas is passionate about helping bring families together through the immigration process, by applying his decades of experience in handling K fiancée visa, spousal parent/child, and sibling permanent residence cases. Naturalization and derivative citizenship cases are also part of his repertoire. As an adoptive father, Douglas also has managed to help a number of fellow adoptive parents to address complex issues related to the interplay between the immigration and adoption laws.

Douglas is a frequent immigration author and lecturer in the immigration law arena. Douglas’ lecture on immigration law at West Virginia University in April 2014 was covered by Channel 12 news (WBOY). Douglas lectured on the topic of “Advanced Border Issues under NAFTA” at the American Immigration Lawyers Association Ohio/Mid-South Conference in October 2013. Mr. Halpert recently co-authored an article, “Five Key Immigration Issues for Foreign Students Marrying U.S. Citizens” for The Commons publication of the Association of College Unions International (2014). “Who is Family? A Look at Canadian and U.S. Immigration Law on the Definition of Qualifying Relatives,” was published in August 2013 by LawNow in Canada. Other recent articles include “Common Immigration Mistakes That Canadian Citizens Make When Marrying U.S. Citizens” was published in May 2013 published by LawNow (April 2013) in Canada.He wrote a chapter, titled “Tales of an Unnecessary Lawyer”, that was published in the book Lawyers as Economic Drivers (May 2012). He is also the author of chapter seven of the publication titled, “Avoiding the Gorge of Eternal Immigration Peril: Tailoring Immigration Strategies and Solutions to Suit the Objectives of Individual Clients,” in the book, Inside the Minds: Immigration Law Client Strategies (September 2008). Recent articles include “Should I Stay or Should I Go? Tax and Immigration Considerations for U.S. Permanent Residents and Citizens, published by Bloomberg Finance L.P. in the Vol, 4, No. 2 edition of the Bloomberg Law Reports, Immigration Law (2011); “Crime and Punishment in American Immigration,” which appeared in the January 26, 2011 edition of the Cincinnati Bar Association Report; The Undiscovered U.S. Immigration Solution Lurking Beneath the Surface: Derivative Citizenship” published in the October 29, 2009 issue of LawNow journal in Canada, “Family Lore or Legal Proof: One Canadian’s Pursuit of U.S. Citizenship, “ the feature article in the September 1, 2009 edition of the Cincinnati Bar Association Report; and “What Every Company in the Natural Resources Industry Should Know About U.S. Immigration Law,” published in the November 21, 2008 edition of The State Journal of West Virginia.

Distinctions
• Selected as Immigration Lawyer of the Year in Southwest Ohio by The Best Lawyers in America® in 2014
• Peer Review Rated AV in Martindale-Hubbell
• Listed in The Best Lawyers in America® since 1997
• Co-Winner of the 1998 Volunteer Lawyer of the Year Award presented by the Trustees of the Volunteer Lawyers for the Poor Foundation established by the Cincinnati Bar Association

Personal
In his spare time, Douglas is dedicated to his wife, Kacy, a retired pediatrician, and their two children, who play for an elite soccer team. He is a sportswriter for The Bleacher Report and you can read his sports stories at this link: http://bleacherreport.com/users/398126-douglas-halpert. He has written a book of poetry, Settling, and is working on his first novel.